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“As languages acquire new speakers, spread to new geographic areas, and mingle with other languages, they change. But is that change happening as quickly as it once did?” (IO9) What might a future version of English look? Perhaps not quite so different from the version we see today — and we owe that to the […]

RhymeZone is a great website to see how a word is used in the context of famous quotes, poems, and plays, but also an easy way of finding rhymes and a whole lot more. Here’s a brief overview of what Rhymezone can do for you: Find rhymes: This function will return words that exactly rhyme […]

Langenscheidt has started a new collection of incredibly bad translations into German from all over the world. Author Titus Arnus has also been a guest on “Tv Total” in case you want to know more. Photo: Haimo PölzlFiled under: Bad Translations, Languagewatch

“The first and central culprit is the idea that fluency is an absolute status, that the world of each language is divided into two groups: “fluent” and “non-fluent”. But here’s a brief example of how muddy these waters can actually be: if I am born in Moscow, but then move to Toronto at 14 and […]

“Real time translation, the kind we imagined in science fiction is finally within reach”, writes Mashable. “In the space of just a few months, Microsoft has introduced live translation services to Skype (still in preview) and now the latest Google Translate features live, language-detecting, two-way audio translation on its free iOS and Android apps. Google […]

Here’s a great new way to study Japanese or English: using this awesome Star Wars English Learner’s Dictionary from Japan that teaches you through Star Wars quotes. It’s much easier to learn a language when you can connect it to knowledge you already have, and this might be a great way for you or your […]

Excerpt from an essay: for “Times Higher Education”: “A misplaced preposition or poor choice of verb can ruin a convincing narrative, reducing the probability of publication in a top international journal and limiting the impact of the research. Not only is this bad news for scientists struggling to communicate their work, it is also bad […]

From director Tony Rogers (Wilfred) and writer Rob Hibbert, (Images You Should Not Masturbate To) comes How to Talk Australians, a comedy web series set in an Indian call centre training college. Presented in the format of an elaborate educational video, the series delivers a satirical take on the Australian way of life. An assembly […]

Ever proofread an email and realize after you have sent it that it contains a glaring error? You know those errors — these are the ones that you miss because your brain inserts the missing word or overlooks spelling errors such as “wiht” that really should be “with.” The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a solution […]

The Wörterbuch der deutschen Umgangssprache is a rather obscure source for German slang, but we kind like it and we would really like to recommend mundmische.de, a quality choice to find out that words like Schniposa do exist for real.Filed under: Dictionaries Tagged: Slang, Umgangssprache